The present invention relates in general to software tools and in particular to a software tool that a touch screen designer uses to establish the ergonomics of touch screen controls.
In designing touch screen user interfaces, the User Interface (UI) designer needs to make the controls (elements a user touches) large enough so that a user or subject can touch the controls without making errors. On the other hand, the UI designer does not want to make the controls too large and waste valuable screen real estate. In the prior art, the UI designer has a subject perform various tasks while recording the number of times the wrong control is touched. The UI designer may then resize the controls and test with the subjects again. To design a better UI, the designer needs to also know how many touches were near misses. Near misses may be an indication that the control is too small. In conducting user tests, another useful type of data indicates the distances touches fall from the center to the edge of the control. How far a touch falls from the center of a control may indicate that a control is too big if most touches fall far from the edge of the control. Presently, UI designers rely on a video of subjects interacting with a set of touch screen controls to determine the subjects success in actuating the controls. Since a successful UI for a touch screen is dependent on how well users are able to use the controls, there is a need for a software tool that enables UI designers to automatically collect data describing a subject""s interaction with a particular set of touch screen controls.
A software tool receives data which establishes where a user touched the screen relative to a particular touch screen control. The software tool has links so that positional data, relative to a set of designed touch screen controls, are stored along with the time that each control is touched. Each user of a particular touch screen design has their own set of recorded touches. When a different UI dialog (window) with a set of controls obtains the user focus, the time that the dialog obtains the focus and a dialog identifier are saved in a file. As the user touches the screen, the screen coordinates relative to the dialog are saved as well as the time of each touch. After the session is over, the UI designer may then display a graphic representation of the dialog with individual touches displayed as small dots. This graphical representation is used by the UI designer to determine the optimum placement and size of the controls for the UI.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention.